Friday, 18 June 2010

Name that Colour

We were quite happy with the colour we painted the bathroom floor: it's the same greeny/bluey/grey colour we have painted the shutters on the outside of the house, and the finished look was quite effective. However, when we put the shower unit in the room the colour didn't look quite right, being a bit washed out by comparison. Then we had a hatching of furniture beetles (which all died as soon as they emerged, due we suspect, to an allergy to paint) which put more little holes in the floor.

Obviously something had to be done...

We thought about what colour we wanted instead, and decided we would like the same colour as the back of the shower unit (seen here). It's a bit of a strange colour though - not exactly blue, but not blue-green, either. We picked up colour swatches from various paint shops, but nothing matched. Until, one evening I walked past a box of electrical bits, looked at the sticky label on the end and thought "I know that colour".

Bingo - exactly the same colour as the shower unit!

We then took the sticky label around various paint shops and brico shops to see if they could find a match, but nothing. So we called into a proper paint shop (Chantemur in Chasseneuil) which like all this sort of shop in France, is a paper/papiers-peint (paint and wallpaper) shop and had a tin of custom dark blueish paint made up.

The machine the paint was mixed on was interesting: a scanner which samples the colour, and a mixing machine which the whole can of paint gets put into - lid on. The machine punctures the lid, adds tint (lots of blue, a little black, eyedropper of yellow) then puts a plastic bung in the hole in the lid. The tin is then removed and put in the shaking machine. We have bought tinted paint before, but never paint tinted to a colour we have taken in to the shop. It wasn't cheap, but we have high hopes for it.

We will report back when the new colour has been applied, but we aren't quite sure when that will be: there is so much going on here at the moment that painting a floor that works is pushed quite a way down the list, and it means that we won't be able to use the disco douche or upstairs toilet for at least 48 hours while two coats of paint are drying.

Simon

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My Dad went in to hospital today, so if you can spare any positive thoughts it would be most welcome.

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About Us

Susan was born in Victoria, but moved to Queensland when she was 11. Simon was born in London, but moved to Canberra when he was 7, and to Queensland when he was 28. In 1997 they moved to London. Susan worked for a large heritage and nature conservation trust and Simon taught music technology at tertiary level.

Now we live in Preuilly-sur-Claise, a small town with a population of less than 1000 people in the south of the Loire Valley. We write about the restoration of our house, the history of our local area, nature, cooking and anything else that strikes us as interesting. When we are not blogging we run Loire Valley Time Travel, doing individually tailored tours of the Touraine for anglophone visitors in our classic Citroëns, Célestine and Claudette.

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